I have written here before that you can improve your photos quickly in just five steps – 1. Correct the exposure.  2. Increase contrast. 3.Increase saturation.  4. Increase structure.  Finally, 5. Crop it. (see our blog).  I think the most powerful crop is a panorama.  See why?

Of course, the best way to make a panorama is to plan for it and make multiple exposures and combine them later in post-processing.  What I am talking about here is finding the “panorama” in your standard 3:2 or 4:3 original image.

A panoramic crop can significantly improve your composition by concentrating the eye on the subject, eliminating distracting elements, and/or eliminating un-interesting things like a blank sky.  If you want to keep it standard, I would use 1:2, 1:2.5, or 1:3.  Here are some more examples.

Finally, I would suggest the same thing when using your cell phone camera.  I love Snapseed and use it on every cell phone photo I make.  It has a convenient crop option with a 16:9 ratio setting.

To see (and buy) our photographs, please go to www.pamphotography.com.